Matas Library - Renovation Progress

There is a blog to keep you up to date on the progress of the renovation in the Matas Library. The carpet and ceiling tiles have been removed in the reading room. The entrance and mezzanine areas are still available for study. There are carrells along the mezannine wall, the mezannine computer labs and several closed study areas on the mezannine.

There is some noise. There are free ear plugs available at the Matas Library Reference desk. Let us know if there are other things we can do to help improve your library experience as we live with the renovation process.

Check out "Matas Library Feng Shui". Your comments are welcome.

Images from the Reading Room, May 28, 2008.

Upcoming Matas Library Renovations

Watch as the library transforms

before your eyes!

Renovation begins Thursday May 22, 2008

Look for these changes in the next few weeks

New Lighting

New Carpet

New Ceiling

Painting

New Window shades

New Seating areas

More computers

Bathrooms accessible from inside library

New Reference and Circulation Area

Coffee

24/7 access

Please accept our sincere concerns about the disruption of this activity. We will be posting details of the renovation process.

SCImago: A new source of journal metrics offers free data on open access journals.

SCImago Journal and Country Rank is an alternative database of journal citation metrics developed by researchers. Until very recently, the ISI Web of Knowledge, Journal Citation Reports (JCR) has been the standard for the ranking of journals (impact factors). Unlike ISI's JCR (available by Tulane license), SCImago is freely available online. In addition to being free, SCImago offers some other improvements:

• SCImago makes use of data supplied by Scopus which covers 13,000 journals, including many journals not tracked by ISI's JCR. Scopus adds open access titles to its database on an annual basis, and so SCImago contains reliable data for the open access journals.
  
• The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) approach weights citations from journals according to how highly cited the journal is, using an iterative approach.
  
• SJR calculation looks at citations made in a three year period which provides a more stable indicator of trends than impact factors.

Another free ranking service is available - Eigenfactor.org which launched last year with a similar approach. See our previous post: Journal Ranking Systems, Journal Citation Reports (ISI) and Eigenfactor

New Rules: Do you receive research funding from NIH?

Do you receive research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)? If so, as from April 2008 you will be required to deposit the final manuscript of your journal articles in PubMed Central and ensure free availability (open access) within 12 months of publication.

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

Specifics:

• http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
• This is a list of the journals that submit articles directly to PubMed Central on behalf of their authors. If you publish in one of these journals, no further action is needed to comply with the submission requirement of NIH Public Access Policy. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm

Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research, Notice Number: NOT-OD-08-033, Effective Date: April 7, 2008

April 7-13, 2008: National Public Health Week

CLIMATE CHANGE 2008
http://www.nphw.org/
Since 1996, APHA has organized National Public Health Week and developed campaigns to educate the public, policy-makers, and public health professionals about issues important to improving the public’s health. By making climate change the theme for 2008, the public health community is changing how society addresses this unprecedented challenge.

There is a direct connection between climate change and the health of our nation today. Yet few Americans are aware of the very real consequences of climate change in the health of our communities, our families and our children.

Related resources:

• Encyclopedia of World Climatology [Springer] (2005)
• Hot House: Global Climate Change and the Human Condition [Springer] (2007)
• National Academies Climate & Global Change
• WHO Climate Change and Human Health
• WHO. Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies for Human Health (2006) Also in print at the Library: WA 30.5 C67 2006

Recent publications on Climate Change from PubMed.

Carlos Finlay and Tulane

The Matas Library has some of the original documents related to Carlos Finlay and his early work on yellow fever on display. Rudolph Matas translated one of Finlay's important early works: "The Mosquito Hypothetically considered as an agent in the transmission of yellow fever poison", by Dr. Charles Finlay. New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, NS9 (1882):601-616.



For more information on Carlos Finlay:

Finley, Carlos E. (1940) Carlos Finlay and Yellow Fever, New York: The Institute of Tropical medicine of the University of Havana by Oxford University Press. Matas Library Location: WZ 100 F49p

Rodriguez Cabarrocas, Raoul. (1960) "Carlos J. Finlay and Yellow Fever". Bulletin of the Tulane Medical Faculty, 19(4):219-228. [Dr. Rodriguez was the recipient of the B. Bernard Weinstein Award] (.pdf version online)

Tulane and Charity Hospital Exhibit

There is a Charity Hospital Exhibit on display at the Entrance to the Rudolph Matas Library. A few of the images are available as a slideshow.

"The history of Tulane University School of Medicine’s involvement with Charity Hospital is long and storied. Tulane, originally founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834, has long played a role in both caring for the poor and shaping the future of the hospital." - The History of Tulane University School of Medicine's Involvement with Charity Hospital - By Douglas R. Lincoln (Class of 2007)

See related publications:

Leighninger, Robert D., Jr. Big Chairty: A History of New Orleans' Public Hospital. Louisiana Cultural Vistas (Fall 2007):p.19

Katz, Alan. Big Charity: A History of Emergencies. Tulane Medicine, 23(1): 14-21. Spring 1992 (First appeared in New Orleans Magazine, Nov. 1991)